All this banter about the NSA = bad or Echelon = bad or the requirement of warrant is entirely missing the point. The truth is that this fundamental lack of privacy is guaranteed to happen. We live in an era when recording data is so cheap and so easy that it's happening accidentally, automatically, as a daily part of living life. Last time I had contact with the police, my phone recorded the entire thing from my pocket. Audio quality was quite good, too. With 32 GB of space on my phone, I could literally record my entire day, every day, and keep days worth of audio on hand in case something "interesting" happened. Oops! What happened to the privacy of those around me?

But, the problem isn't the computers recording your every move, it's the secrecy with which it's being done and the lack of accountability that secrecy gives rise to.

This was predicted years and years ago and the brilliant, understandable answer to avoid abuse is simple: transparency .

I don't think that cops should have the option of wearing cameras; I think that no arrest should ever be done without them, and simply lacking the arrest footage should be enough to dismiss the case. Any and all public places should be open to be recorded without further notice. And all recordings of public places or of public officers in the performance of their duties should also be public. (with an appropriate time delay)

Some areas are already experimenting with these ideas and the result is nearly 90% reduction in police misconduct complaints. The privacy of our actions is far less important than the abuse of the information collected.

Because it's highly relevant: Good morning Baltimore!

Isn't it sad that somebody thought about putting javascript into PDF and concluded that it was a "good idea"?

The fact that you would even state such abject stupidity means you don't understand the simple, salient point that has long ago been made. You would do well to avail yourself of the reams of tired, boring, and utterly meaningless conversations in the past where I eventually explained the simple point so that a moron like you can stop wasting all our time in the here and now.

If you want "maturity" as defined by some passive aggressive type of niceness that comes when you don't ever say what you are actually thinking, you are in the wrong place. We're here to get something done and you can take your sissy, pandering, liberal business-speak ethos and cram it into some corner that doesn't involve the rest of us who are trying to get something valuable done.

Ha ha! That's rich!

I mean, that's rich, and so's Linus, but you aren't. Rich, that is. Working from home in your bathrobe and getting rich doing it providing something of such valuable that it's used practically everywhere you turn is hardly the hallmark of a loser.

Now, if what he primarily produced was sarcastic Starcraft II commentary videos, that'd be a different story...

An article that decries all the valuable, important stuff that could have been brought up, but then doesn't bother to bring them up and/or discuss them in any detail?

This article was a waste of my time. I wish Slashdot had a thumbs up/down on articles.

In most cases, yes. We *think*. However, there are cases where we're pretty sure that's not the case. As with everything, your mileage may vary, and in crypto, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't actually out to get you.

I have a 7" Android Tablet that I used to use heavily. I had a Moto Droid 2 smartphone that was nice, but the bigger screen of the tablet was enough of a draw that I'd use the tablet a fair amount for personal browsing.

That all changed when I got my new phone, a Moto Razr Maxx HD. The screen is bigger and sharper than the Droid 2, just enough that the relative usability of the tablet almost disappears, and the fact that my phone already has all "my" stuff on it from earlier today is more of a draw.

My 7" tablet has been charged and ready to go for months, but I haven't picked it up even once since.

There's a balance; I think the Galaxy Note is too big, but I think that the Razr Maxx could be just a few bits bigger. If the Galaxy S3/S4 had the battery life of the Razr, I'd probably bite. However, the battery life of the Razr Maxx is so ridiculously awesome, (especially when traveling) I'd never want to give that up!

Didn't you get the news? Fully 10 people have now adopted Windows 8 tablets, 100% growth!

But Poe's law predicted a long time ago, that such detection is, in many cases, actually impossible to accomplish.

Using compressed air as a storage medium has a number of problems:

1) Low energy density. Air is very compressible. While that's what makes it usable as power storage in the first place, the amount of energy that can be saved in a gallon-sized container as compressed air pales next to a gallon of gasoline.

2) Power loss through thermal contraction.. When you compress air, it heats up. As that heat energy escapes, it effectively takes away a good chunk of the energy you consumed compressing it in the first place. Once the compressed air has cooled, the effective pressure drops. The more air you compress into the same space (See Energy Density above) the worse this effect is.

3) Power loss through leakage Even when available, caves are terrible places to store compressed air. Even if you seal the cave somehow, you then have to deal with seismic shifting, creating leaks and causing your beautiful, N-redundant power source to leak into an underwater stream bed. Lastly, even when sealed properly, air will *still* leak out. Ever wonder why your bike/car tires need to be aired up every so often even when they *aren't leaking?

Air molecules are wily little critters

4) turbine inefficiency The higher the pressure of compressed air, the more the above problems manifest themselves. However, the lower the pressure of compressed air, the less efficient it is to convert the compressed air back to electricity!

Good solutions address the multiple facets of the problem. For example, much of the cost of running a data center is spent on cooling. It might be preferable to store "coolth" in a stone or liquid cooling chamber under the facility than to try to store compressed air. Compressed air can be turned into electricity, which is more flexible, but is also more lossy for the reasons listed above. A combination of technologies will be needed to provide the best answer for redundancy and efficiency.

I know of nobody who likes or prefers Windows 8. I know of a few people who "don't mind it". The fact that this is what customers are saying about their flagship product should have them a bit concerned...

I still use my laptop for "srs bizness" but recently, when I did some server upgrades where I would normally log in via the laptop intermittently to perform admin functions, I found myself using my folding bluetooth keyboard and my Android phone instead.

It was surprisingly productive and, being much smaller, was actually far more convenient than pulling out what felt like "big iron" to do a simple shell task.

My Android 4.1 phone (Moto Razr Maxx HD and I love it!) is already my go-to device for casual browsing.

So, the phrase "constitutional rights" is a misnomer?

Funny, that...

So, the purveyor of mathematical computations that can be traded and/or sold via a network of cryptography meets a foundation that sells the idea of value via paper receipts.

This could get rather interesting...